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The Men

7th St Entry

Minneapolis, MN

June 12, 2013

On just the third night of their North American tour, Brooklyn-based band The Men landed in Minneapolis for a packed-in show at the world famous 7th St Entry.  Despite being an 18+ event, the 30 to 40-something crowd was out in full force; a welcomed contingent that’s become increasingly more prevalent at shows around the Twin Cities in the last 10 years or so.  In the moments before the The Men were to play, you could feel an anticipatory energy make its way around the venue.  The smallish room, which was already nearing capacity, seemed to become even stuffier as empty glasses began piling up on any available flat space and drained tallboys dropped to floor at an alarming, yet smile-inducing rate.  

Without so much as a polite nod, The Men took to the stage and went right into a newer, as of yet unrecorded song, “Dark Waltz.”  The crowd wasted no time getting into the act, as bobbing heads and gyrating bodies took over the floor area in front of the stage.  The band moved quickly into an especially raucous version of “The Brass.”  It was one of what would be a large number of songs from their new album, New Moon. 

Despite the tight confines of the Entry stage, the five-piece found plenty of room to thrash about, which seemed even more impressive considering the presence of a Fender Rhodes piano.  It appeared as though Ben Greenberg has joined Nick Chiericozzin on guitar duties for this tour, while Kevin Falkner picked up the bass, and Marc Perro’s concentration is primarily the keys, save an acoustic guitar or harmonica moment here ‘n’ there.  (The Men rotate instruments at a rate that makes it particularly difficult to follow along, so forgive me if I reported some of this in error.)

At the end of “Without a Face”, Chiericozzi took a pull off of a bottle of Jose’ Cuervo tequila and comically stated, “It’s the third night of tour, which means my guitar is finally staying in tune.”  He then paused, as if to contemplate his next thought before continuing, “We ran out of weed this morning…and I smell weed like, right here…so, like….I will be here, ya know…hint, hint.”  They then slide gently into the smooth tones of “The Seeds.”

The room really started to heat up by the time the band hit the middle of their set, which included “Candy” from last year’s breakout album Open Your Heart, and rollicking versions of “I Saw Her Face”, “Electric” and “Freaky.”  Chiericozzi and Greenberg traded soaring guitar solos in impressive fashion, as Faulkner and drummer Rich Sammis keep things moving along at punk rock clips.  When the band concluded their set with “Open Your Heart”, faces were sweaty, clothing had been removed, and half-drank beers had been flung; leaving the floor a slippery mess, the likes of which were complicated for the buzzed-up masses to navigate.

At the request of the boisterous audience, The Men returned to the stage once again for an encore. Striking dangerously close, but never veering off completely into jam band territory, they played a lengthy medley comprised of “Supermoon” from New Moon and “Night Landing” from 2011’s Leave Home.

Setlist:

Dark Waltz

The Brass

Without a Face

The Seeds

Bird Song

New Song

Candy

I Saw Her Face

Electric

Freaky

Another Night

Open Your Heart

encore

Supermoon/Night Landing

Overheards:

“The Men are like a punk band that decided to be the Allman Brothers…in a good way…if that’s possible.”

“The Men are like a punk band that wanted to put out a Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young record on SST.”

“I can’t see the drummer, but I know he’s not wearing a shirt.”

Personal disclosure: I am not confident that the setlist is 100% correct, as I’m not 100% familiar with The Men.  On top of that, my notes, which were written in complete darkness, became nearly unreadable once someone spilled beer all over them.  That someone may or may have not been me.

@OMG_NOB

(This review contains copious spoilers: if you intend to read the novel yourself, proceed with caution. We're posting it as a blog since it's not strictly music-related, despite being written by a prominent musician. Now read on!)

Joining the vast array of musicians-turned-novelists (wait, what?), Davey Havok of AFI fame throws his hat into the ring with this, his first book. Pop Kids is inspired by "pop stars, fashion models, celebrities, internet porn, social networking, reality TV, sex, drugs and vegan banana bread", and stars a cast of teenagers with dubious nicknames.

It's always a bold move when artists make the jump from one medium to another, and personally I've always treated the move with a little suspicion, like when Michael Jordan reinvented himself as a baseball player after his first retirement. It's not always a given that talents in one area translate to similar skills in another, and I'm not entirely sure this is the case with Pop Kids.

The first thing that hits you about this novel is the sheer amount of branding. Within the first few pages I was left wondering if the product placement was intentional: McQueen, iPhone, San Pellegrino, Hello Kitty and others are names that occur almost as much as those of the protagonists. Maybe this is Havok's way of highlighting the brand-obsessed youth of today and the commercialised culture that dominates the LA scene, but it becomes particularly wearing as the novel plays on.

Then you have the characters: rarely can I remember reading a book with this many unlikeable creations. It's not that they're all obnoxious ciphers, but mostly that they're paper-thin and two-dimensional, to the point where I could barely summon up the energy to remember who was who after yet another exhausting chapter of references to "MK", "Score", "Lynch" and other self-created nicknames (do you know anybody who successfully made their own nickname work?). The protagonist's constant references to veganism and straight edge were both twee and proselytising in equal measures: either we get saccharine lines like "a fresh, locally baked low-fat cranberry scone from Cherie Cherie is waiting for me in the breadbox", or we get preachy asides like "my guests begin poisoning their minds and bodies [with alcohol]". Havok has said in promotional material that Score, the lead character, is not meant to represent the author, but it's hard to not take this view the more these references are shoehorned in.

An unaddressed issue with Score's prominent opposition to alcohol is his nonchalance when it comes to taking advantage of the drunken state of the girls he's sleeping with: "Gross. Wine is just unacceptable. [...] the alcohol could encourage a second round of activities". Perhaps this is just to make a point of the contradictions and confusions of being a teenager, but it still felt like an ugly trait in a character knowing Havok's hardline stance on alcohol.

Similarly, there's a scene midway through where Score, who makes constant references to "Moz" in place of "God", and whose brother's beloved Smiths t-shirt is a prominent plot element, has to go and google Johnny Marr to find out who he is. While Havok is quick to address the "mortification" of his lead character, it feels quite hard to swallow: a huge Smiths fan treating Morrissey as his deity who's never heard the name Johnny Marr before? Giving Havok the benefit of the doubt and assuming he's using this to make another point about the vapid, bandwagon-jumping hipster crowd, all this serves to do is to make the protagonist even more obnoxiously unlikeable.

"I awake to her opulent gaze. In here, here eyes have wildly waxed to an almost golden hue".
- Pop Kids

Characters aside, the actual text of the novel is another difficult challenge. Passages are littered with purple prose, with a highlight being this gem: "I awake to her opulent gaze. In here, here eyes have wildly waxed to an almost golden hue". Without playing the literary snob card, this kind of prose is the sort of thing written by people who really want to call themselves "writers", believing that overly-flowery language and clever reappropriation of obscure adverbs marks them out as a modern-day Wilde. In spoken word readings by Havok from the novel, these passages come alive a little and are granted depth and feeling by the singer's rich, deep voice. On paper, though, they feel overwrought and mood-breaking.

One thing that has to be addressed is the fairly poor attention to detail when it comes to proofreading the text. This is a first edition so of course there are errors that go unnoticed, but the sheer amount of misspellings and poor grammar become hard to ignore as you read: "security breech" was one of my favourites, but there were plenty of references to people: Vanessa "Hudgins", Miley "Sirus", "Agnes Dean" (I presume Agyness Deyn), "heroine" (meaning the drug). Similarly, there's flagrant apostrophe abuse too: "the Hugh's classic" (referring to John Hughes' The Breakfast Club), "Dad make's fresh pesto", and perhaps worst of all, a reference to the musical, "Cat's". Nobody's perfect and errors happen but this doesn't help the feeling that the book is a bit of a vanity project, with little strict editing that it could've benefited from.

The part I've left till last to discuss is the plot. That's because it's by far the least prominent part of the novel: there barely is one. There are seventy chapters in this book. Seventy. But barely anything happens for any of them. There are so, so many copious sex scenes that I genuinely don't want to even contemplate the topic for at least the next week. Had I known before picking this up that it would've been a kind of underage scene kid version of Fifty Shades of Grey I wouldn't have bothered. Constant euphemisms around "glittering joy" or "French dressing" (semen) or "my Producer" and "production house" (penises) make these some of the most awkward and cringeworthy sex scenes ever, not helped by their repetitive frequency. It seems like every other chapter has a girl giving Score an unexpected blowjob in a cinema projection room, or an all-out orgy of seventeen-year-olds watching communal porn. I honestly found myself gritting my teeth as yet another sex scene came up, wondering if I could just skip the chapter.

The story revolves around these illicit "Premieres", which start off as underground film screenings and quickly devolve into free-for-all swingers' clubs made up of local teenagers and even one of their teachers. There's also a somewhat pointless subplot which sees local churches mysteriously burning down, but this is spoilered almost from the opening words as we see the protagonist burning down the cinema at the "end" of story, leaving little mystery as to who was burning down the churches, too. This attempt at Pulp Fiction-esque non-linear narrative is poorly rendered: the novel ends without a clear circular reference back to this point meaning I had to re-read the prologue chapter again to remind myself what happened.

I had expected a grand denouement: there's an unexplained murder (or is there?) and nothing seems to come of it, and we never hear whether Score gets implicated for his presumed role in burning down public buildings. The closest we get is a moment where our hero is hauled into the principal's office, but manages to come out of it unscathed and unchallenged. I genuinely wanted to see him brought down and made to own up to his illicit activities, which probably says something about my weariness with the whole thing by this point. Honestly, the book could've been half its length and still wouldn't have made much of its weak story. I finished the book feeling no warmth toward any of the characters, no interest in what they did next, and a strong desire not to see the words "San Pellegrino", "faded vintage tee" or "oral joy" again for the rest of my life.

We know there's a sequel coming up (or at least other books by Havok). I can say with conviction that I won't be reading it unless some serious editing takes place next time. This smacks too much of self-indulgence: the plot is dull and almost in the background; the characters aren't well-observed and lack any depth; the writing is sloppy and overblown. There are some interesting moments (the repeated, obscure references to moths filling Score's mouth and escaping at inopportune times is genuinely interesting and creative) but these are forced into the background by the loud, dumb sex scenes and their spinoff dramas.

In Havok's defence, he's hardly positioning the novel as a piece of classic literature or everyone-must-read-this mainstream bestseller. It's clearly aimed at an underground/alternative audience with familiarity with the subject matter. Havok's press interviews suggest he's written the book to try to imagine what his youth would've been like in the age of smartphones, the internet and social networking. I therefore expected intelligent and cutting portrayals of disposable culture, empty pop culture sentiment and youthful obsession. Instead, it just doesn't quite manage to make any profound point or statement: it presents some 2D characters and a brief look at their privileged lives, tries -- and fails -- to set up a compelling plot, and then strings these things out like paper dolls, baldly demonstrating that there's almost no substance or glue holding them together. We don't get any sense of something being explored or revealed, except that teenagers sometimes put private stuff on the public internet. We don't feel like the modern sense of blasé, seen-it-all-before attitude has any real impact or meaning. We don't learn why we should care about anything that happens in the text.

Much of the sex scenes feature men urgently pleasuring themselves before finally dumping a wad of "joy" on a couch for someone to clean up later. This feels like an apt metaphor for Pop Kids: masturbatory, self-indulgent, tacky and in need of a cleanup.

Score: 4 / 10

Book info

• Published by: Black Candy Publishing
• Length: too long 320 pages
• Publication date: April 2, 2013
• Homepage: http://www.popkidsbook.com
• Trailer: (yes, books have trailers now): http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ajfV-7K3Vcc

Tegan and Sara were appreciated by Albany, NY last month when they came to the Upstate Concert Hall, the first time they've visited since the duo released So Jealous, which was in 2004...literally almost a decade ago. "We need to come to Albany more," Tegan Quin declared after playing the first couple songs of sisters' set, which were mostly from their newest accomplishement, Heartthrob, their seventh studio album and most successful in terms of sales, debuting at number 3 on the Billboard 200 chart.

Even though they played almost every song from Heartthrob that night, the girls also stuck to their roots, playing the infamous "Walking with a Ghost," a few from The Con and Sainthood and even added a cover to their setlist (Prince's "When You Were Mine"). They started the night with "Back in Your Head," with Tegan on guitar and Sara on keyboards, which is how it was most of the night.

Probably the biggest showstopper of the night was "Call it Off," a song that at first, seems like a throwaway but it's one of those songs where if you listen to it a couple times, you'll notice all of the idiosyncrasies in the recording...and they definitely pulled them off live as well. Another highlight was during their encore, where they compilled a medley of 9 songs from their various albums throughout the years. It was a good way to get other songs into the set that normally wouldn't have been able to be played due to time constraints. Some of the songs in the medley included "You Wouldn't Like Me," "Hop on a Plane," and "On Directing".

It's obvious on their recordings, but was validated during their live show, that Tegan is the stronger voice of the two. I'm not sure if it's a confidence issue or what it is, since they pretty much have the exact same voice being twins and everything, she's just way more present than Sara.

Since this was the beginning of the tour, the girls were a little rusty with harmonizing together. Not to mention, if it's the first time they're performing new material during tour, it's going to take some time to perfect things. Regardless, the sisters put on a great show and even called themselves out when they weren't on their a-game. They even re-started "Alligator" due to Sara confusing verses, by her exclaiming over the instruments, "No, I fucked up! I fucked up!" The other song they had some severe problems with harmonizing together was "Now I'm All Messed Up," one of my favorites from Heartthrob. It's nice to see a band that can make fun of themselves and be completely aware that they're human and sometimes, musicians will in fact, fuck up. The difference between a good and bad show, is how the band will deal with that. Showing their sense of humor and confidence in their talent, the two definitely prevailed and performed an animated and ecclectic show.

Setlist:

Encore:

Medley (My Number/Monday, Monday, Monday/You Wouldn't Like Me/Superstar/Knife Going In/Hop A Plane/Sentimental Tune/On Directing/I Know I Know I Know)

Living Room

Anthrax, Exodus, High On Fire, Municipal Waste, Holy Grail

First Avenue

Minneapolis, MN

April 4th, 2013

Continuing their recent-ish trend of performing classic albums in their entirety, Anthrax rolled into town as the headlining act on the Metal Alliance Tour to play their 1987 record Among The Living for a sold-out main room at the legendary Minneapolis club, First Avenue.  They brought with them a handful of ripping acts that include newer band Holy Grail, staples of the ‘00s Municipal Waste and High On Fire, and fellow veterans from the first wave of American thrash metal, Exodus.

The start time was bumped up a couple of times throughout the day, but you wouldn’t have known it without first checking the club’s Twitter feed.  Therefore by the time I arrived, I had already missed all but two songs of opener Holy Grail’s set.  If I didn’t know better, I would have thought I’d stepped into some sort of 1980s time warp.  On stage, four guys with long hair, all black everything, and forearms covered in leather and spikes, struck familiar metal poses, while wailing speed metal blasted from their stacked amps.  The crowd was fairly sparse at this point.  Youngsters in throwback flipped bills, skinny jeans and patched up jean vests, thrashed about in a modest-sized pit.  Bearded hessians and off-the-clock professionals sporting crisp Anthrax tee shirts (likely purchased when the Worship Music tour came through town two years ago, or perhaps just 10 minutes prior) milled about the bar areas, staring at their smart phones and sneaking one-hitters.  Without knowing much about the band before walking through the front door, it was difficult for me to tell if Holy Grail were comprised of seasoned veterans or eager twenty-somethings.  Either way it was pretty clear they were well-versed in the way of the thrash.

Municipal Waste took the stage just as the crowd had nearly doubled in size.  It was immediately apparent the band’s special brand of crossover party thrash is better suited for smaller venues where audience participation is encouraged.  While the barrier between the band and the kids deadened the stage diving and pile-on opportunities, it didn’t stifle any of energy being put forth on either side of it.  When the band demanded a circle pit, the people were more than happy to oblige.  As per the usual, lead singer Tony Foresta supplemented their humor-based songwriting with witty between-song stage banter.  Before they began playing “The Thrashin’ of the Christ” (from 2005’s Hazardous Mutation) he introduced it by saying, “This song goes out to Satan.  It’s about thrashin’ in Jesus Christ’s face and kicking Mel Gibson in the balls!”  Similarly he set up “Mind Eraser” (also from Hazardous Mutations) by saying, “This is a love song.”  Which he followed up with, “We love drinking alcohol.”  The songs that garnered the biggest crowd responses were “You’re Cut Off” (from 2012’s Nuclear Blast debut, The Fatal Feast) and “Headbanger Face Rip” (from 2007’s The Art of Partying.)  Everyone in the pit was fist-pumping in unison to the respective choruses.   Municipal Waste ended their set with the title track from The Art of Partying, while colorful streamers and confetti blasted the crowd from cannons on the sides of the stage.

With the club now nearing capacity, High On Fire stepped on stage to break up the would-be thrash monotony with their signature blend of Sabbath-riffs and sludgy doom metal.  Matt Pike and crew’s contribution was short and concise, without a lot of chatter.  When Pike did choose to speak, he kept it brief, as is his wont.  When he introduced “Fertile Green” (from 2012’s De Vermis Mysteriis) he informed the audience very matter of factly, “This song is about smoking weed."  In a brazen act of defiance (and quite possibly, stupidity) a couple members of the crowd up front actually lit up and exhaled large hits of marijuana smoke towards the stage.  Things really picked up near the end of the set.  By the time they wrapped things up with the title track from 2010’s Snakes for the Devine, the audience was left wanting more.  Judging by the crowd reaction, it’s safe to assume anyone that was previously unfamiliar with High On Fire had surely been won over.

Prince’s “Purple Rain” played over the P.A., as thrash metal veterans Exodus entered the stage to the approval of a now sold-out First Avenue.  Long time fans showed their knowledge and appreciation by cheering loudly as guitarist Gary Holt, the only member to appear on every Exodus release dating back to the early ’80, and original drummer Tom Hunting led the charge.  It didn’t take long to get the pit moving either.  The band tore into “The Ballad of Leonard and Charles” (from 2010’s Exhibit B: The Human Condition) as the floor crowd swirled into frenzy.  They effortlessly transitioned into “A Lesson in Violence” (from their classic 1984 debut album, Bonded By Blood) before allowing the committed moshers a little time to breath.  Lead singer Rob Dukes, who’s been with the band since 2005, talked (with no sense of irony whatsoever, I might add) about the decision to use “Purple Rain” as an intro song.  “This is (the club) where Purple Rain was filmed?  We gotta use Prince tonight.”  Knowing the importance of giving fans what they want, and no doubt self-aware that Bonded By Blood is considered a landmark album in the development of thrash metal, Exodus’ set was fairly reliant on songs from that release.  “Piranha”, “Strike of the Beast” and the title track were all played, in addition to the aforementioned “A Lesson in Violence.”  Their set was rounded out nicely with a mix of other material, such as “Blacklist” and “War Is My Shepherd” (both from 2004’s Tempo of the Damned.)  Before breaking into “The Toxic Waltz” (from 1989’s Fabulous Disaster) Dukes instructed the pit to separate into two sections, facing each other.  Then, as the first chord was struck, the groups charged at each other and collided in a mass of sweaty, long-haired humanity.  (It’s what’s known in the hardcore scene as the Braveheart Wall of Death.)  It was a beautiful cap to an already frantic 20 minutes.  They finished up their portion of the evening with the Exhibit B: The Human Condition album closer “Good Riddance.”   

As the stage hands began preparing for the arrival of the headliners Anthrax, a collective anxiety began to wash over the crowd.  Lines for the bathrooms and the bars grew to near unmanageable sizes, while the battle for good sight lines along the sides, in the back, and on the balcony had begun.  Those that had managed to maintain a spot along the railings or at the front of the steps became agitated; refusing to budge for any late arrivers and less-fortunate attendees that anxiously attempted to peak over their shoulders.  At the same time, bodies eagerly pressed into each other, leaving little breathing room for anyone on the main floor. Every inch of available eye space was quickly filling up.

Bassist Frank Bello was first to take the stage, followed quickly by guitarist Scott Ian, vocalist Joey Belladonna, and co.  As the opening riffs of “Among the Living” struck, it was as if a seismic shift forced the whole club to rumble, and when the mosh breakdown hit everyone went fucking bananas.  Belladonna paused briefly to introduce the next song.  “This one is about you guys” he said as he pointed to the floor.  “It’s called...”—and the audience finished his sentence for him—“CAUGHT - IN  - A - MOSH!”    The band played a lengthier version of the song, as the largest circle pit of the evening commenced at a hasty pace.  Near the end of “I Am The Law” Belladonna put in extra effort to stretch out his vocal chords—as if he hadn’t fully warmed up yet—proving why he remains to this day one of the genre’s premier vocalists.  After an especially thrashing rendition of “A Skelton in the Closet” the band put a pause on the Among The Living songs to squeeze in some other material.  Two songs from 2011’s excellent Worship Music bookended a set that included covers of AC/DC’s “T.N.T.” (from their recently released covers EP, Anthems) and “March of the S.O.D.”,  a song that belongs to Ian and absentee drummer Charlie Benante’s lesser known “other band” Stormtroopers of Death.   As they prepared to attack the second half of Among The Living, Belladonna said something about being a lifelong Minnesota Vikings fan, as he normally does when playing Minneapolis, and it was predictably (and sadly, I might add) met with mixed reactions.  He then screamed, “Can we do a fucking war dance in here tonight?!”  The crowd roared back in approval, and the band ripped into “Indians.”  With the strobe lights, double kick drum and chunky riffage, it was pure head-banging ecstasy.  Anthrax finished out the rest the album before returning with an encore that included “I’m The Man” (form the 1987 EP of the same name) and the show-closing Trust cover, “Antisocial” (from 1988’s State of Euphoria.) The left little doubt in anyone's mind that at three decades strong, they are still on top of their game.

Shoutout to Jason Henriksen for the upload.

Setlists:

Municipal Waste

Unleash the Bastards

The Thrashin’ of the Christ

Sadistic Magician

You’re Cut Off

Beer Pressure

Thrashing’s My Business…And Business Is Good

Headbanger Face Rip

Mind Eraser

The Art of Partying

Personal bias: I wish Municipal Waste would have played something from their excellent 2002 split with Crucial Unit.  They still have the best tee shirts though.

High On Fire

Rumors of War

Frost Hammer

Fertile Green

Madness of Architect

Snakes for the Devine

Personal bias:  Matt Pike deserves kudos for continuing to play shirtless, despite gaining a noticeable amount of mass around the mid section.  And every time I see Jeff Matz playing bass with High On Fire, I am reminded how much I miss seeing Zeke live. 

Exodus

The Ballad of Leonard and Charles

A Lesson in Violence

War Is My Shepherd

Piranha

Blacklist

Bonded By Blood

The Toxic Waltz

Strike of the Beast

Good Riddance

Personal bias: Despite Exodus having gone through numerous lineup changes, it hasn’t lessoned my enthusiasm for them.  I think Rob Dukes has done an excellent job of not only covering the old stuff adequately but also carving out his own place in the history of the band, having been with them for eight years now.

Anthrax

Among the Living

Caught in a Mosh

I Am The Law

Efilnikufesin (N.F.L.)

A Skeleton in the Closet

In the End

T.N.T. (AC/DC cover)

March of the S.O.D. (Stormtroopers of Death cover)

I’m Alive

Indians

One World

A.D.I./Horror of it All

Imitation of Life

Antisocial (Truth cover)

Personal bias: While I am a little disappointed  that Rob Caggiano departed the band —mostly because of his superb production work on Worship Music—journeyman Jonathan Donais is no doubt and excellent fill on guitar.  Same can be said for Charlie Benante’s absence from this tour.  It was barely noticeable, as Jon Dette, who’s cut his teeth as a member of Testament and a Slayer fill-in, has clearly immersed himself in Anthrax’s back catalog.  Now that I’ve seen the band do Spreading The Disease and Among The Living in their entirety, I’m really hoping State of Euphoria is next on the hit list.  When Belladonna came out for “Antisocial” wearing a Brett Favre Vikings jersey, it was on some multi-layered, Inception-level type shit for me.

A special shoutout goes to the stage crews, who kept the tear-down and setup between bands moving quickly; and the engineers, who provided superb sound throughout the evening.

@OMG_NOB

In the days following Adam Yauch’s passing in May of last year, many of us nostalgia-stricken fans were searching for words to express how deeply saddened we were by not only the loss of Adam but inevitably the Beastie Boys as a whole.  Someone along the way said something to the effect of, “The Beastie Boys were the Internet before there was an Internet.”  Without even having to think about it, any Beastie fan over the age of 30 had to agree with how incredibly accurate that statement was.  Likewise, it’s on the Internet that I’ve spent the last 11 months scrounging up old Beastie Boys clips as part of my own personal grieving process.  Like this one from 1984.  It’s of the early incarnation of the band, where Kate Schellenbach (later of Luscious Jackson) played drums and Mike D sang.  It was recorded for a NYC public access show called The Scott & Gary Show.  Even though this one was uploaded to YouTube way back in 2007, I hadn’t come across it until last week.  I apologize for the late slip, but this Beastie Boys footage needs to be addressed...

First of all, how great are those graphics for Scott & Gary?  Black magic marker on some poster board, with a still camera shot on it—it’s a reminder that public access TV, like punk rock or zines or anything that employed DIY methodology, was something that virtually anyone could do...no matter how shitty the outcome.  Alright, moving on…

“White Shadow” is my goddamn jam!  To those that are unfamiliar, The White Shadow was a television program that ran from the late ’70 to the early ‘80s.  The basic premise was this: a Caucasian former NBA player takes a basketball coaching job at a predominantly African American and Hispanic high school in South Central Los Angeles, where fairly predictable culture clash-y type things ensue.  I was way too young when it originally aired and grew up without TV for a good portion of my youth, so I never got to see that much of it.  But one of my fondest memories from childhood is visiting my uncle’s house and staying up all night, lying on the floor in front of a little 9” black and white TV set, watching reruns of The White Shadow on a UHF channel.   Anyway, this song is obviously about that show and really important stuff like what time and channel it was on and how it eventually got cancelled, which totally bummed the guys out.  To me, this is pretty much the best song ever written.

I love how after the second half of the strangely-interrupted “White Shadow”, Mike D, who is very much in command despite being a horrendous (AKA-awesome) singer, dismissively waives the host off like, “Wait, we got another song…” He then turns to Ad-Rock and says, “Remember to sing.” (Which Ad-Rock does indeed remember to do.) before proclaiming, “This one goes out to our mothers.”  In typical punk rock fashion, “Egg Raid on Mojo” is sloppy, fast and fun.  It ends with Mike D stating, “That was our new Kiss mastermix version.”  It’s unclear whether that’s a shot at the band KISS or the radio station, KISS FM (I think this was recorded on Valentines Day.)  but it matters little to me either way, as I believe rather hasty endings such as this are a key component of live punk shows.  Johnny  Rotten’s famous line from the end of the last ever Sex Pistols show comes to mind: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”

OK, before we leave, let’s take special notice of the sartorial choices going on here.  Kate is wearing a nice V-neck sweater...Ad-Rock is sporting the snap back mesh; a look we will get used to seeing him with, at least until '89...my surprisingly preppy guy, MCA clearly hasn’t discovered the motorcycle jacket yet...but, whoa, wait...let’s talk specifically about Mike D’s green windbreaker for a second.  I know that fashion, like pretty much any fucking thing else, is circular.  That is, "what goes around, comes around."  But I have to wonder; did he time travel forward to the year 1995, visit a Pharcyde video shoot, steal Fatlip’s windbreaker, sew a hood on it, dye it green, and then bring it back to 1984 just to look really awesome while singing hardcore songs about old TV shows and juvenile actions on public access television?  I think want to believe it’s entirely possible…  OK, I know that’s a huge stretch but I just spent 20 minutes of my life Googling “green windbreaker ‘90s rap videos Fatlip time travel” in hopes that I would find some minuscule strand of evidence that would back my theory. I was unsuccessful but I'm not about to just throw that time away.  Let me have this!  Hey, one of the many things the Beastie Boys taught us about life, is that sometimes when you’re committed to an idea you just gotta make it work, even if making it work means admitting that it doesn’t really work at all.  So, uhm, there’s that.  Also, note to self: coin the term “windbreaker hip-hop.” 

Shoutouts to MediaGod for the upload.